Archive for March 18th, 2010

San Antonio (14 August 2010) — Esteban “Steve” Jordan, the conjunto accordion legend has died of complications from liver cancer. He was 71 years old.

Last year, Alex Avila produced this appreciation of the musical pioneer.

Texas accordion artist Esteban ‘Steve’ Jordan has built a reputation as a reclusive, eclectic artist. Many of those who know his work say he is truly a musical genius. But unlike other Tejano accordion players like Flaco Jiménez, Jordan resisted musical collaborations and built a reputation for keeping to himself. In fact, he often refused to give media interviews.

In 2008, Jordan was diagnosed with liver cancer and cirrhosis. While he has battled those illnesses, he has largely maintained a regular schedule, playing at Saluté International Bar in San Antonio, Texas every Friday. This past February, Jordan released his first CD in nearly two decades.

Over the past decade, Juarez, Mexico, just across the river from El Paso, Texas, has garnered much unwanted attention. The murder of women and girls lured to the border by the promise of jobs in the maquila industry emerged in the late 1990s. And the first decade of the 21st century saw a major increase in drug-related violence.

It’s hard to avoid gruesome murder photos constantly in the Mexican media. But the recent killings of Americans and Mexicans connected to the American consul in Juarez have again shocked the community. Questions quickly arose as to why drug gangs would target the American embassy. But American FBI units have said that Americans were not specifically targeted and could have been caught in a case of mistaken identity.

Alfredo Corchado has been following the drug violence for years as Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News.

In January of 2009, independent producer Scott Carrier produced a report for NPR’s Day-to-Day program (now defunct). In it, Scott followed around a Mexican photographer whose job it was to photograph gruesome drug-related murder scenes before the bodies were taken away to the local morgue. Most of the photos would appear in the next morning’s newspapers.